Area Booksellers Wonder If Customers Will Pay $50 For `Sex' With

Madonna

October 18, 1992|By JOCELYN McCLURG; Courant Book Editor

Will the earth move for booksellers and book buyers when Madonna's $49.95 "Sex" opus hits the stores with a bang Wednesday? Or will the arty, racy, mega-hyped book of Madonna's sexual fantasies be another big headache for Time Warner, which has a knack for attracting controversy and the wrath of the "family values" crowd?

"Sex" will be sold vacuum-wrapped in a Mylar bag -- what you don't see is what you get -- and with a warning sticker. But if you've had a peek at "Erotica," the video that accompanies the breathy 3-minute proposition that constitutes Madonna's first single from her new album (due out Tuesday), you've gotten a taste for what "Sex" seems to be all about -- nude hitchhiking and polymorphous groping.

In the October issue of Vanity Fair, the Material Girl coolly flipped through the coffee-table book that few would dare to display on their coffee table, and the blushing interviewer reported that Madonna's playmates in "Sex" include two lesbian skinheads who answered a casting call, rapper Big Daddy Kane, supermodel Naomi Campbell and actress Isabella Rossellini. Madonna also reportedly has a distinct fondness for bondage.

All this has booksellers simultaneously nervous and convinced the book may be the biggest title of the fall and Christmas season.

Warner Books is printing 750,000 copies of "Sex," which has metal covers and was produced for Warner by the quality publishing house Callaway Editions. Warner says the book will not be reprinted, even if the first printing sells out, because each copy is numbered and is being sold as a "collector's item." The nation's two largest bookstore chains -- Waldenbooks and Barnes & Noble/B. Dalton -- have prepared corporate statements that bookstore managers can share with customers who are offended by "Sex." (Both statements defend the right of bookstores to provide "diversity and choice" to customers and say censorship is not the role of bookstores.)

The B. Dalton store at the Hartford Civic Center will not sell

"Sex" to anyone under 18 and will display the book behind the cash register. An unwrapped copy will be available to adults who want to look at it upon request. (Many bookstores will not unwrap the book because Warner Books will not accept returns of unsold copies of "Sex" that have been unwrapped.) The Encore bookstore chain also plans to display copies of the book behind the counter. Waldenbooks will only sell the book to adults but will let individual stores decide where to display it.

Brian Vaal, manager of B. Dalton at the Civic Center, says more than 20 customers have already reserved copies of "Sex" -- a large number, especially for a $50 book.

And David Epstein, owner of Huntington's bookstore in downtown Hartford, also has had a number of customers reserve the book, which has led him to increase his initial order from 20 copies to 150.

Epstein says Madonna's book is "not my cup of tea," but he is surprised so many regular customers have asked about it.

"The feeling of most people who have ordered the book is that Madonna is something special, that this is cutting-edge art," Epstein says. "They're not the kind of people who are buying it because it's smut and dirty pictures. People are interested in it as art."

Well, that's what they always say about Playboy, too.

Epstein, who initially had doubts that "Sex" would sell, says it's the kind of book that's "either going to fly or going to die." Vaal of B. Dalton believes people will continue to buy it as a Christmas gift through the fall season. "I think it's going to be the unexpected huge book for Christmas."

Huntington's will not have any unwrapped copies available for perusal, nor will the store restrict sales of "Sex" to minors. But customers who want to buy "Sex" at Huntington's will have to ask for it, because it won't be out on display. Why? "I can't imagine any other book having more value on the street," Epstein says. "Shoplifters will be dying for this one."

At least one local independent bookseller has serious reservations about the book.

Sarah Bedell, owner of the Bookworm in West Hartford, says she has ordered copies of "Sex" but won't make a decision about whether to sell it until she has had a chance to look at it herself.

"The fact that it is wrapped in Mylar does give one pause," she says. Bedell says that everything she has heard about "Sex" makes her think she will find it "personally offensive," and she doesn't believe it's the kind of book that most of her customers would want.

It will be interesting to see whether "Sex" turns on book buyers or if the world has had its fill of Madonna's overexposed belly button et al.

Or, to put it in language Madonna would understand: Just how badly do people want to put their hands all over her body?